Atticus Finch was an assassin, bird hunter and sometimes civil rights lawyer, best known for having defended the Kool-Aid Man on charges of "disorderly conduct unbecoming of a liquid receptacle". He was later elected Grand Lawgiver of Alabama, using his own version of How to Win Friends and Influence People, which would later be stolen by Dale Carnegie (able to because he'd mastered the technique of winning friends and influencing people). Near the end of his life, he turned to politics, helping Saddam Hussein rise to power as the 44th President of the United States, the first Kurd to hold the esteemed position.

As an assassin, he was well known for his marksmanship, and was the suspected twelfth gunman in the murder of JFK (see below).

How to Kill a Mockingbird

Finch is best remembered as the protagonist of the semi-biographical novel, How to Kill a Mocking Bird, by Stephen Harper. The plot concerns Finch's efforts to eradicate the family of mockingbirds living in his backyard, as well as defending himself at the subsequent trial. The book did poorly with its target audience (bird lovers, oddly enough), but later developed a cult following of small game hunters. It is now considered, by some, to be a classic on the diverse and robust subject of blowing the hell out of mockingbirds.

Victims

While Finch's career as an assassin is mostly associated with being the twelfth gunman at the John F. Kennedy assassination (see above), the fact that he enjoyed a rather prolific career as such is often overlooked. Beginning with a neighborhood dog that had contracted rabies (though some have claimed it simply "looked at him the wrong way"), Finch found his lust for taking lives to be unquenchable. In 1940, this new blood lust in tow, he took a sabbatical from the world of civil rights (a concept, unbeknownst to Finch, which would not actually exist until Rosa Parks gave birth to her son, Martin Luther King, on the front seat of a bus in 1955) to seek employment as a government contract killer. Failing that, he contacted his old friend Al Capone and began his career as a plain ole mob hit man. Some of his most famous victims include:

During his tenure as a gun for hire, Finch developed a catchphrase, which he would repeat at each kill: "It's time to get Boo Radley on your ass!" No one seems to definitively know quite what this means, though some have speculated that "Boo Radley" was some kind of liquor Finch was fond of.

Trivia

How to Kill a Mockingbird served as the impetus for the much less interesting graphic pamphlet, How to Kill a Hunting Partnera Quaylea Quail America by United StatesVice PresidentDick Cheney.